


Sister City

by JumpingJackFlash



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 18:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JumpingJackFlash/pseuds/JumpingJackFlash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are other cities like Night Vale, and the parallels are uncanny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sister City

" _A friendly northwoods community where the winter's cold, the summer's beautiful, and things howl among the pines that are not wolves. Welcome… to Darkwater._ "

"Cecil?" Carlos leaned around the corner from the kitchen. "What are you listening to?"

Cecil made a slow-motion flailing gesture toward the coffee table until he found the laptop's spacebar to pause the audio file. He was sprawled on his couch with one long leg flung over the back of it, bare foot planted right in the chilly breeze from the air conditioner. He didn't bother lifting his head when he replied, "A colleague's show. He mentioned he might be visiting Night Vale, so I thought it'd be polite to familiarize myself with his recent broadcasts."

"He's biting your style," Carlos pointed out.

"It's an _homage_ , Carlos," said Cecil, voice full of the same fond exasperation with which he usually corrected Carlos about the municipally mandated Theory of Relativity. Which was blatantly incorrect, but which was, according to Cecil, close enough for government work.

"Of course it is." Grinning, Carlos went back into the kitchen. He'd volunteered to scrape lunch together. Nothing fancy; even if he wanted to attempt Real Dinner in a kitchen that was not his, and even if he knew what half the stuff in Cecil's fridge even was, this wasn't a date. They were just… hanging out.

They were past the thing where every time they met it was either Personal or Not Personal and it mattered intensely which. They'd been dating long enough that when the Glow Cloud dropped a dead armadillo into the air conditioner on the lab roof, he hadn't thought twice about asking if he could come over to Cecil's apartment for the hottest part of the day, and Cecil hadn't stammered once when he agreed. And now Cecil was researching a colleague's radio show as if Carlos's presence wasn't even special enough to warrant making conversation.

It was nice. Carlos liked it. It felt like the sort of situation that could last.

When he came back out with a plate of sandwiches (wraps, if he wanted to be technical, since they were made with tortillas instead of wheat bread) and a couple of beers, the laptop was saying, " _Lars Ahlstrom -- you know, the boat rental guy? -- reports that the bizarre creature he trapped in his woodshed was not, in fact, a hodag, but just a really ugly pit bull._ " Carlos nudged Cecil's non-air-conditioned foot aside so he could sit and listen too. " _When asked about the horns, tusks, and spiked tail he mentioned in his previous report, he simply repeated, 'a **really** ugly pit bull'. He also says he'd like to keep it, but he's a little short of funds for getting its shots, and if you could click the 'donate' link on his Tumblr, that'd be great. He's already named it Alison._ "

Cecil finally cracked an eye when Carlos tapped his knee with the sandwich plate. He paused the audio file again, took a sandwich, and said, "Tusks? That is _totally_ a hodag."

"Alison's a nice name," Carlos mused. They both managed to maintain deadpan for about four more seconds before cracking up. When they were done laughing, Carlos said, "Okay, but homage? He's straight-up copying you."

"Nonsense. We don't get hodags _or_ pit bulls this far south."

"No, I mean, that -- 'you know, the boat rental guy?' That's exactly what you do whenever you mention John Peters."

Cecil blinked uncomprehendingly. "John Peters is a _farmer_."

"Yeah, but the speech pattern. John Peters -- you know, the farmer? -- you do that every time."

"Oh my god." Cecil tried to facepalm with a sandwich in his hand; fortunately, he caught himself before he got mustard in his hair. "You're right, _I absolutely do that_. Oh god, I'm so embarrassed."

"Hush, it's fine. I thought you were doing it on purpose."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Like a stylistic thing."

That starry-eyed look came over Cecil's face, the one he used to get whenever Carlos said his name. "You are so _sweet_." He swung his refrigerated leg right over Carlos's head so he could sit up and throw his arms around Carlos's neck, sandwich and all.

Carlos, resigned to washing mustard out of his hair as soon as he got home, set down his beer and hugged back.

 

* * *

 

He'd forgotten all about the copycat colleague when Cecil called to ask if he'd like to meet at the diner for lunch. He'd long since cleaned the armadillo chunks out of the air conditioner and replaced the damaged fan, and had been catching up on the work he'd blown off to lounge around at Cecil's, so they hadn't seen each other for a while. He assumed Cecil just wanted to spend some time together.

He reevaluated his assumption when he found Cecil sitting with a couple of men he didn't know. One of them was sitting on the same side of the booth as Cecil. They were chatting animatedly, both leaning their elbows on the table -- their elbows were _touching_ \--

Carlos paused just inside the door to ponder, bemusedly, the first rush of irrational jealousy he'd experienced since he was an undergrad.

He almost wished he had time to savor it, but Cecil had spotted him and was waving. The stranger beside him nudged Cecil, pointed to Carlos, and raised his eyebrows. Cecil nodded, sheepishly proud. Of course he'd been talking Carlos up like he always did. It was less embarrassing than it used to be. "Carlos!" he said when Carlos reached the table. "Remember how I said my colleague from Darkwater was thinking of visiting?"

The man offered Carlos a handshake without getting up. "Micah," he introduced himself. Catching Carlos's back-and-forth glance between him and Cecil, he added with a grin, "We're not related."

"No, I didn't think you were," Carlos said. For all that they were both blondish and pale-ish, and had curious eye colors -- Cecil's purple, Micah's wolf-gold -- and sleeve tattoos of curling shapes and unreadable runes -- Cecil's in black, Micah's in woad-blue -- they didn't actually look that much alike. No more than Carlos resembled the brown-skinned and broad-shouldered man across the table from the pair.

"Cassidy," was all that one gave him as he slid into the booth. That and a tired twitch of a smile. He had Native American features and a messy ponytail. When he shook Carlos's hand, Carlos noticed ingrained grime in the pads of his fingers and in the nailbeds.

"Mechanic?" Carlos guessed.

"Yep."

There was an awkward pause.

"So," Carlos said brightly, "what possessed you to come _here_ for vacation?"

Cecil looked faintly hurt. "Carlos, you make it sound like Night Vale isn't a perfectly lovely destination. The Night Vale Tourism Board would take issue with that, I think!"

Whoops. "No, I mean -- in the summer. You have to admit it's especially hot right now."

"But you don't have the humidity," Micah said. "Or the mosquitoes."

"God, the skeeters," Cassidy agreed.

"Big as hummingbirds."

"Literally," Cassidy clarified for Carlos's benefit, holding his hands about six inches apart. "They will cold drain a bitch."

"I keep reminding people not to go out without their mosquito repellent and tennis racquet," Micah said sadly, "But do they listen? Of course they don't."

"God, tell me about it," Cecil said. "Do you know how many times I've had to remind people to avoid wheat and wheat by-products? It's not as if the effects are subtle!"

Micah was nodding in world-weary sympathy. "It's like… what part of 'do not feed the wendigos' do you not understand?"

"Ugh, I know, right? You'd think 'stay away from the dog park' would be simple enough to follow, but nooo. I don't know how I could make it any clearer!"

"Truer words, my friend. Sometimes I think they just keep the radio on for --"

"-- background noise --"

"-- yeah, it's like they're listening, but they're not --"

"-- they're not _listening_."

"Ex _act_ ly."

Cassidy elbowed Carlos lightly in the ribs. "Thinking I'll go for a smoke. You could join me."

Carlos looked at the two radio hosts, now entirely wrapped up in their shop talk, and nodded. There was no point mentioning he didn't smoke. He doubted Cassidy was particularly desperate for nicotine himself.

Cassidy led him to an elderly black pickup with a layer of desert dust crusted on top of the paste of squashed bugs on its grill. They sat on the tailgate and contemplated the heat-shimmer over the highway. Cassidy got out a cigarette, offered Carlos the pack, put it away without comment when Carlos shook his head. He lit his smoke with a Zippo that had something engraved on it. Carlos held out a tentative hand; Cassidy slapped the lighter into his palm. The engraving was a sort of fat Iron Cross with a truck wheel on it.

"Army mechanic," Cassidy said to Carlos's questioning look. He took the lighter back and dropped it in his jeans pocket. "I didn't grow up in one of these weird-ass towns either. I'm an outsider like you."

"You know about me, then."

"Micah listens to Cecil's show a lot. Big fan." He flashed a grin that acknowleged just how obvious Micah's fanboying was. "You're here studying the place, right? Figure anything out?"

"Of course. I _am_ a scientist," Carlos bluffed.

Cassidy raised an eyebrow and waited.

Carlos sighed. "Not a goddamn thing."

Laughing, Cassidy leaned back on his hands and blew smoke at the bleached-denim sky. "I do not envy you, bro. If I tried to figure it all out I'd sprain my brain. Couple tours overseas broke me of that, though. I just take life as it comes, and don't worry too much about when it'll end."

"That sounds… freeing."

"Yeah, I'm scared shitless most of the time. I think that's why I settled there. I just didn't feel right in safe places anymore. Couldn't turn it off, you know? So I up and started driving, and I fetched up in Darkwater, and I stuck. They had a mechanic got ate by gators a week before I got there --"

"Gators?" Carlos interrupted. "Where _is_ Darkwater?" Micah's show had mentioned 'northwoods', and Carlos was pretty sure the American alligator's range didn't stretch any higher than the Carolina coast. Then again, Cecil thought hawks were a myth.

"Beats me, man. Wisconsin, Minnesota… think it might move around. Anywhere the woods are thick and the lakes are deep, and cold water bubbles up from a limestone labyrinth that's never seen sunlight." There was an ominous softness to his voice that made Carlos shiver -- not a creepy shiver, that was far from the creepiest thing he'd heard recently, but as if the chill of those flooded caves had poured over him for a moment. But Cassidy sounded like a regular guy again when he went on, "All I know is, there was a garage going begging, and I didn't have to pay a red cent to take it over."

Carlos knew enough about Night Vale to guess how things were done in Darkwater: "What _did_ they charge you?"

Cassidy shrugged. "Some memories. Don't know what was in 'em, but I got some weird scars on my back and I flinch when I hear a humvee, so I'm guessing I didn't want 'em."

A silence fell, not awkward this time, but natural. Carlos didn't want to feel a kinship with this man, because the sense of being slotted into some repeating pattern like a modular shelving unit was already too strong, what with the Broadcast Twins finishing each other's sentences inside. But he did appreciate people who let him hear himself think.

So it wasn't until Cassidy flicked the butt of his third cigarette end-over-end into the sun-glare that Carlos bothered to speak again.

"Yours have a thing for your hair too?"

Cassidy grinned like the grill of a '69 Camaro. "This one time? I told him I miss my army buzz? And he _cried_."

"Good job you didn't buzz it, if Micah's anything like Cecil."

" _If_?"

"Point," Carlos conceded, and then he told the story of Telly the barber. It was surprisingly, deeply satisfying to hear someone respond to that with "Fuckin' A, man," instead of a hostile and drawn-out " _Telly_."

"You know what?" Cassidy said. "Gimme your phone." Carlos handed it over. Cassidy put his number into it, then called his phone so he'd have Carlos's. "Call me whenever, bro," he said as he handed it back. "Reckon you need someone to talk to, and I sure as shit know I do."

Carlos nodded. "It's like… talking about him to anyone else just feels like…"

"Gossip."

"Yeah."

"But you and me, we know. Much as we love 'em, there is no denying that they are _batshit insane_."

Chuckling, Carlos leaned back on his hands too, and they both studied the hazy wisps of cloud drifting in the high, hot sky.


End file.
